EPA recognizes Larkin master plan developed by architecture school

Larkin Square, in the heart of the Larkin District, is a
multi-purpose public space featuring indoor and outdoor dining,
seating areas, retail market stalls, public sculpture and a free
concert series.

“The 2012 winners of the National Award for Smart Growth Achievement are taking innovative steps to realize a vision of American communities that are clean, healthy, environmentally responsible and economically resilient”

Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator

EPA

The Larkin District and its development and planning team,
including the School of Architecture and Planning, won an honorable
mention at the prestigious National Award for Smart Growth
Achievement ceremony held earlier this month in Washington,
D.C.

The Larkin District was one of seven projects across the
U.S.—and one of only two in the Main Street or Corridor
Revitalization category—that the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) award program recognized this year. The EPA
recognition highlights the project’s creative approach to
building strong, sustainable communities while protecting human
health and the environment.

Over the past decade, the Larkin District, located about a mile
east of downtown Buffalo, has evolved from a largely abandoned
industrial district with decaying infrastructure and contaminated
sites into a thriving urban village and live/work/play
community.

Anchored by the Larkin at Exchange Building—a former
Larkin Soap Co. warehouse that the Larkin Development Group (LDG)
restored in 2002 into one of Buffalo’s most sought-after
commercial addresses—the district today includes several
other mixed-used projects in renovated historic buildings, green
space, improved streetscapes, brownfield restoration and now
residential development.

“The 2012 winners of the National Award for Smart Growth
Achievement are taking innovative steps to realize a vision of
American communities that are clean, healthy, environmentally
responsible and economically resilient,” says EPA
Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

Howard Zemsky, managing partner of LDG, which had no tenants
lined up when it started the Larkin at Exchange project, notes that
“what started out as an improbable vision has turned into the
reality of a revitalized and reborn urban neighborhood. Our
confidence rested largely on the principles of smart growth and a
commitment to restore the district’s historic building
infrastructure, celebrate its legacy as a center of industrial
innovation and extend the economic, social and environmental
vibrancy of these developments into the surrounding neighborhood
and city.”

Zemsky adds that the Larkin District’s success is tied
closely to the project’s diverse partnerships across the
public, private and nonprofit sectors, from First Niagara Bank to
the New York State Brownfields Cleanup Program to the Old First
Ward Community Association.

Laying out the master plan for the Larkin District was the Urban
Design Project (UDP) in the School of Architecture and
Planning.

UB’s involvement began in 2004, when Zemsky approached the
UDP, a research center devoted to the critical practice of urban
design, to develop a master plan for an urban neighborhood that
would build on the success of the Larkin at Exchange project, with
historically sensitive development, vibrant streets and public
spaces, integration with the surrounding neighborhood and
accessibility via multi-modal public transportation.

The resulting “Larkin District Plan” set the
foundation for a series of investments, including two mixed-use
developments—the Schaefer Building and the U
Building—that have added commercial, retail and residential
space to the district, mostly through the adaptive reuse of
historic buildings.

“Our goal was to create a historically context-sensitive
plan at the neighborhood, corridor and city-wide scales,”
says Robert G. Shibley, dean of the School of Architecture and
Planning and director of the UDP, which partnered with the
architectural firm Kevin Connors Associates and led a team of
planners and students in carrying out the project. UDP team members
included project manager Elizabeth Cheteny and architecture and
planning graduate students Sean Brodfuehrer, Jajean Rose-Burney,
William Smith and Steven Watchorn.

Adds Shibley: “With smart growth principles at the core of
his vision, Howard Zemsky and his community partners have gradually
fit together this place-making puzzle in a way that preserves and
celebrates the district’s history, and creates new spaces and
amenities for a thriving commercial center and urban
neighborhood.”

LDG has acquired 30 properties for future residential
development based on the master plan’s recommendations for
multi-use buildings along Seneca and Emslie streets. Such
developments will include the expansion of first-floor retail and
rental housing units on upper floors. Vacant properties in the
central district are under design for a concentration of new
cottage houses.

Recent investments in the Larkin District also include
improvements to deteriorated streetscapes in the surrounding area
to increase accessibility and establish critical gateways, a core
tenet of the Larkin District Plan. These include $2 million in new
sidewalks, street furniture, lighting, trees and plantings,
crosswalks, bike lanes, signage and bus shelters—a project
largely funded by Larkin at Exchange anchor tenant First Niagara
Bank.

Additional elements of the plan that are being put into place
include a network of green spaces in support of a
pedestrian-friendly environment and stronger connections to the
surrounding neighborhood.

This past summer, Larkin Square—a 34,000-square-foot
gathering space for workers, residents and visitors—opened in
the heart of the Larkin District. The multi-purpose public space
features indoor and outdoor dining, seating areas, retail market
stalls, public sculpture and a free concert series. Envisioned in
the master plan, the project was developed by LDG working with The
Neighborhood Workshop LLC and its principal, Tim Tielman.

“Our design challenge was to transform a railroad-era
industrial superblock into humanized, smaller, multi-use blocks
that were knit together by pedestrian-priority circulation
paths,” says Tielman. “The paths and future development
sites were placed according to principles of human geography and
wayfinding. All paths lead to Larkin Square, which itself connects
into the city grid. The space was designed to attract office
workers, visitors and local residents by evoking mystery, adventure
and pleasure. The concept is ‘Take space. Attract people.
Stir.’”

Zemsky will continue to implement key elements of the master
plan as the boundaries of the district expand. For instance, LDG
has begun pushing for a traffic circle that would complement
Buffalo’s designed—but never fully
completed—Frederick Law Olmsted Parkway System.

A land-use and transportation-planning solution, the traffic
circle at Seneca, Fillmore and Smith Streets would link the
northern and southern sections of the park/parkway system, calm
traffic and establish a historic, interpretive gateway into the
revitalized Larkin District.

LDG now has commissioned the Urban Design Project and its
recently aligned research center, the UB Regional Institute, as
well as Kevin Connors of Eco Logic Studio, to carry out a second
phase of the master plan. This effort will consider the edge of the
district and its connections to the neighborhood, enhance the
district’s transportation planning and offer recommendations
for additional mixed-use neighborhood and commercial
development.